Why do most startups fail? the answer is UX, no not UX as in UI/UX, real UX
The missing link
Have you spent too much effort, money & time on a web/mobile app or any kind of product/service to realize after launch that users only try it once and never get back to it again, maybe you thought it’s a good idea but it’s not to your users or they don’t get how it works, while you thought it’s really usable and clear ??
Do you know how many web or mobile apps are launched everyday and how many of them actually gain attention and be used other than abandoned ??
For a web/mobile app or any product/service to be successful 3 main aspects are needed, Business, Technology, Design.
Business: Will it gain money and be sustainable ?
Technology: Do we have the capability to make it work perfectly ?
Design: Will it address users needs and gain active users ?
The first 2 aspects we always focus on, the Design aspect we almost forget or take very lightly, thinking of it as some fancy logo and flat UI and it’ll do the job people will love it.
Guess what most of the apps you really use everyday not for their clean UI, you use it as it hits on a direct need of yours and it’s easy to use, and that what design rule is. Discovering what people really need and how they expect it to work and how they will be able to easily use it.
Design is a profession
At Simpleia we take Design seriously we always say “Design is a profession”
We must start our designing process by actually talking to targeted users, if you are designing an app concept without talking to users then who are you designing for, are you designing it for yourself ?? then be ready to be the only user of your own product.
And explaining how it work and why it’s awesome to everybody you meet is not an option, things meant to be understandable without explanation or tutorials, people are not ready to take a course before using any new stuff.
In the user research phase we interview users and we reach conclusions we understand their conceptual models and how they predict a system/functionality to work depending on their past experiences, and what are their real needs/priorities in real life scenarios.
And NO believing that we know all the answers and that we are the users and that there’s no need to talk to actual users at their environments is WRONG, no need to learn that the hard way.
Then there’s some other phases in the process that are equally important like the Information Architecture (IA) which we believe is the heart of the UX process, were based on the insights of the user research we start deciding what will be the primary features and what are the user rules and what will be their screens and how the navigation will be consistent so that users won’t lose their ways, and what users will be most probably want to do next in each of the screens, basically how to create very smooth user flow around the system.
Missing the IA phase result in a randomly created system that is very common for users to get lost through resulting in an escaping user who will never give your product a second chance.
And there’s more to the UX process which this article have no room for like UX Strategy, Branding, Interaction Design, Testing & UI/Visual Design, I only wanted to focus on User Research and Information Architecture as they are most often missed.
It’s measurable
How then to measure if a UX Design is successful or not, we always like look on a UI and say yes this thing have a good UX. Without even trying to use it or learn about when, where and why it’s used and by whom. it might look cool but is it really good UX , meaning that it will achieve user engagement ??
As a UX Expert sometimes I get called after a keynote or so by a young passionated startup team asking me to have my say over their new cool mobile app, which is really cool but even if I’m Don Norman I won’t be able to judge a UX of an app by just looking at it, I need to know the users, context, environments etc… as explained earlier.
UX is measured not by judges or even by UX experts it’s measured by numbers, if UX improvements is applied on a landing page by the goal of converting more people to go through the Call to Action (CTA), and the numbers confirms it, then the UX is successful, even if it looks less cooler than the previous UI.
That’s the whole point of this article real UX Design is meant to achieve certain goals not just look cool.
Start now
So unless you are not building a system for a business that have specific specs and will force their employees to work on it whether they liked it or not.
If you are working on a web/mobile app/platform for the users/customers you need to start by UX Design and I mean real UX Design as I explained glimpse of it here, not put UX as a step in the way after everything is already decided NO I mean from the very beginning and if that’s too late then at least try to improve that now.
Contact me: ao@simpleia.com skype: ao_point FB: ao.point
